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Who is the greatest theologian in the last 2000 years? (Besides Biblical People!)

Paul. He wrote half of the New Testament

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At 6:23pm on November 15, 2009, sticha said…: The Trinity Refuted
The teaching of the trinity can easily be disproved by quoting just a few scriptures.

John 5:36-38

Jesus speaks out: "Now I have a testimony greater than John's. For the works which the Father has given Me that I should be perfecting them, the works themselves which I am doing are testifying concerning Me that the Father has commissioned Me. And the Father Who sends Me, He has testified concerning Me. Neither have you ever heard His voice nor a perception of Him have you seen. And His word you do not have remaining in you, for that One Whom He commissions, this One you are not believing."

God, the Father, commissioned the Son. God the commissioner, Christ the one commissioned.

1Corinthians 8:4-6

Then, concerning the feeding on the idol sacrifices: We are aware that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God except One. For even if so be that there are those being termed gods, whether in heaven or on earth, even as there are many gods and many lords, nevertheless for us there is one God, the Father, out of Whom all is, and we for (lit. into) Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through Whom all is, and we through Him. But not in all is there this knowledge.

God the source, Christ the means.

Philipians 2:5-11

For let this disposition be in you, which is in Christ Jesus also, Who, being inherently in the form of God, deems it not pillaging to be equal with God, nevertheless empties Himself, taking the form of a slave, coming to be in the likeness of humanity, and, being found in fashion as a human, He humbles Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore, also, God highly exalts Him, and graces Him with the name that is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should be bowing, celestial and terrestrial and subterranean, and every tongue should be acclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord, for the glory of God, the Father.

Supposing the trinity was true, how could Christ be inherently in the form of Himself, or equal with Himself, or how could He exalt Himself, or grace Himself with the name above all names?

Colossians 1:15
(Christ), Who is the Image of the invisible God,

How in the world can we read this to mean that Jesus Christ, the Lord, and God, the Father, are the same "person"? Tell me! Anyone? God, the divinity, is invisible, and Jesus Christ is the perfect image or display of that being, out of Whom all is.

1Timothy 2:5-7

... there is one God, and one Mediator of God and mankind, a Man (lit. human), Christ Jesus, Who is giving Himself a correspondent Ransom for all (mankind, cp. 2:4) (the testimony in its own eras), for which I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying, a teacher of the nations in knowledge and truth.

One God and one Mediator of God and mankind. Two, not one. Jesus Christ is the mediator of mankind. He is a species by himself. Not mankind, nor God, the Father, but right in between the two. He is the perfect, flawless mediator, in Whom we can see the Father in a form that we can understand and perceive.

What about the holy spirit? The Trinity says it is a separate "person" in the Godhead. These are unscriptural terms, first of all, and should be discarded immediately, for they don't help to come closer to God, but rather distract us from Him. Second of all, we need to face the fact that God is spirit (John 4:24). If we are aware of this and then read Luke 1:35 we see that holy spirit and God is the same.

And answering, the messenger said to her, "Holy spirit shall be coming on you, and the power of the Most High shall be overshadowing you: wherefore also the holy One Who is being generated shall be called the Son of God."

The messenger that speaks to Miriam, the mother of Christ, doesn't say that the holy spirit comes on her, but holy spirit, without the article. Note the parallelism of Holy spirit and power of the Most High. This verse proves that spirit is the means by which God generates, how He effects things in this world. Spirit is an element, a force or power, not a "person". Also, if God and holy spirit were not the same, how could Jesus Christ be called the Son of God? Is Jesus Christ called the Son of the Holy Spirit anywhere in the scriptures?

Introduction
There are few things more frustrating than trying to get a Trinitarian Christian to understand how completely made up the Trinity doctrine is when they’re not willing to listen to reason. I don’t know what hidden appeal the idea of the Trinity has, but there must be some comfort that people take in it or else they wouldn’t be so stubborn about believing in it despite its lack of support from the Bible or its late origination in the religion. (On the other hand, maybe it’s just that universal instinct to believe what you were brought up to believe even if it’s irrational to do so; the Koran complains again and again about this.)
This paper is written in the hopes that it can wake some Christians up to the truly made up and completely groundless nature of one of their religion’s central doctrines, that of the Trinity. I can only hope that the paper turns out to be persuasive enough to break through that instinct to keep believing. All I ask is that the reader read this with an open mind.
The Implication of the 1 John 5:7 Forgery
It is now a well known fact that the following verse, the only verse of the Bible which actually states the Trinity doctrine, is a medieval insertion to the text:
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. (1 John 5:7, King James Version)
Christians these days understand this without understanding what the existence of this forgery obviously means: there would not have been such a forgery if a desperate need for one did not exist. In other words, the fact of the 1 John 5:7 insertion logically indicates that the Trinity doctrine is so completely without a biblical basis that a biblical basis had to be forged. At this point the Trinitarian will be telling me that whoever made the addition just didn’t know that the Trinity doctrine really is in the Bible if you read between the lines, and thought that we needed something more explicit. They’ll also tell me that the Bible refers to both Jesus (peace be on him) and the Holy Spirit as being God, and that is enough. But I will demonstrate in the sections below (and have, in fact, already demonstrated elsewhere on this page, in my refutation of Answering Islam’s article on the Trinity) just how untrue all of that is.
Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14
With 1 John 5:7 gone, these are the only two verses in the Bible which mention the names “Father”, “Son” and “Holy Spirit” in the same sentence, and neither of them suggest even remotely that these three are the same:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:14)
That’s it. It’s a long, long way from there to the definitions of the Trinity found in the creeds, and it would be ridiculous to think that the placing of the names in the same sentence means anything, especially when you consider what I’m about to tell you about the phrase “Holy Spirit.”
The True Meaning(s) of the Term “Holy Spirit”
There are several things that the Bible can mean by the phrase “Holy Spirit”, but none of them suggest that it’s God Himself being referred to. (For more information on this than I give in this article, see the section on the phrase “Holy Spirit” in my article “Answering Islam’s Article on the Trinity Refuted”.) First, contrary to the allegations Christians made that we Muslims are being silly when we say that in the Koran the Holy Spirit is Gabriel, the Bible itself sometimes refers to angels as “spirits of God”:
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. (Revelation 5:6)
Read through the rest of the relevant chapters of Revelation and it will be clear that these seven spirits are the seven angels in 8:2 and so on. So the term “spirit of God”, which Christians consider synonymous with the term “Holy Spirit”, can mean “angel”. The word “spirit” can also mean “prophet”, as we can tell from 1 John:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)
Hence the Islamic belief that the Holy Spirit prophesied in John 14-17 is Muhammad (peace be on him). Then, of course, there is the literal meaning of the phrase, which involves the Greek term “spiritos” literally meaning “breath”:
And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit." (John 20:22)
Then there is the more nebulous meaning of the term, in which the spirit is simply the spirit of inspiration, in the ordinary English sense of the word. Christians lump up all of these different meanings, all of which are both obvious and obviously different, under the same definition, and that is precisely why the Holy Spirit is the hardest part of the Trinity to define, the most meaningless of the three phrases. There is no single meaning of the phrase in actuality, but only a long string of different non-Trinitarian meanings, but Christians consider them all to be the same, and so they end up with a term that cannot be clearly defined, or can be only when everyone has a different definition to give. It’s jargon, in other words, nonsense talk. That’s what you get when you oversimplify a complicated series of different meanings of a term--you inevitably end up with a difficult, nebulous, hard to fix, subjectively interpreted meaning on your hands.
The Blessed Jesus’s Express Lack of Divinity in the Gospels
In my article on the Trilemma on this site’s “Christianity” page I have gone through all of the blatant misunderstandings of the words of Jesus (peace be on him) which are purported by Christians to be claims to divinity. Now I will show you other, much clearer verses which say the opposite. First, there is his own, express denial:
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.'" (Mark 10:17-19)
There is nothing hard to understand about this: the negation involved is unmistakable. Someone ran up and knelt and called him good; he said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone”; he then proceeds to answer the man’s actual question. The speech, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” is about the clearest possible negation of both being good and being God I can think of. (Prophets tended to be modest about their own goodness.) The first sentence introduces the idea of him being good in a question. The second sentence then says that no one is good but God. It would be like if you ran up to me and said, “Great surgeon, how do I make a proper incision in the heart?” and I said, “Why do you call me a great surgeon? No one is a great surgeon but someone with the proper training.” Hence, I am denying being a great surgeon. Think about it and you’ll find that you can plug in any number of such scenarios and they all will clearly involve denial. The only other possibility is that I am making the statement in question to get the other guy to realize that he is indeed talking to a great surgeon, but that isn’t plausible since he already knows or else he wouldn’t have called me that. Blatantly, I am denying being a great surgeon. So it is with the scriptural passage.
And in addition to denying being God, Jesus (peace be on him) even prayed to God:
And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed. (Mark 1:35)
He also accused God of forsaking him:
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" that is, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46)
Does it not look to you like this is a mere human being that these verses are referring to, especially when he unmistakably said himself that he was nothing more? Christians always respond to this with the incoherent statement that Jesus (peace be on him) was both perfect God and perfect man at the same time. But this is a circular response, since it assumes that there is any reason to think he was God in the first place, which is exactly what I’m pointing out is not the case. You can’t be both perfect God and perfect man if you aren’t God to begin with, never said you were (c.f. “The Trilemma Refuted”, “Christianity” page) and even unmistakably said you weren’t, as I established above. (Besides, it’s in my experience that the “perfect God and perfect man” response is nothing more than a cop-out, a paradoxical way to evade doctrinal problems which Christians use only when something threatens their beliefs.)
The Temporal Gap Problem
As much as some Christian missionaries would like you to think that the Trinity doctrine was held by even the earliest Christians, it obviously was not since it did not appear in Christian writings for the first two hundred and fifty or so years of the religion. There is nothing written about the Trinity until the years preceding the official establishment of the doctrine in 325. Ordinarily I don’t like arguments from silence, but this is one of the few that works. I just can’t believe that if a doctrine were there from the start, no one wrote about it until the fourth century. It’s just too much of a strange fluke to swallow.
And as such, the late development of the doctrine betrays its artificiality. It was an innovation, and certainly wasn’t something that could be found in the teachings of Jesus (peace be on him) himself. Be reasonable here: if a doctrine is not to be found in the Bible and did not originate until over a quarter of a millenium after the religion started, is there really any reason to believe in it? Is it not just obviously false and heretical? Aren’t the Bible and the teachings of Jesus (peace be on him) in supposed to be the only sources of Christian doctrine? Think about that. Think about everything I’ve said. Please.
John 10:30
“I and my Father are one.”

This verse does not say that they are “same being.” This text does not say how they are one at all. Fortunately for us, John later records Jesus’ teaching on how He and his Father are one. “And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as (kathos) we are…Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as (kathos) thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as (kathos) we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (John 17:11, 20-23).

Jesus here makes clear that his disciples can be one even as (kathos) He and his Father are one. The Greek kathos means just as or how (See Strong’s). In other words, Jesus prayed that they may be one just as He and his Father are one. If Jesus and his Father are one being manifest in two persons, for Jesus’ prayer to be fulfilled his disciples must loose their identity and become absorbed into the Trinity! Assuming that a Billion or more will be saved (just for fun)–what will that make? A “Billinity”?

So how are Jesus and his Father one, according to Jesus? The key is in verse 22: “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that(hina) they may be one, even as we are one.” The Greek word hina translated “that” literally means "in order that" (See Strong’s). Jesus and his Father share the same glory and are thus one. Jesus prayed that his disciples may receive Their glory "in order that" they may be one with Them. The thing that the Father and Son have in common is, then, their "glory" and not their "being."

There is no other passage of scripture in the Bible that defines how Jesus and his Father are one. The later post-Biblical doctrine that define the Trinity as one being in three persons is not derived from the Bible but is added to it.

John 14:10-11
“Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.”

As seen above, Jesus prayed that his disciples “all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,” but one need not go to a different sermon of Jesus to find this. He refers to this very concept in the same sermon. In verse 20 he said, “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). If Jesus meant for us to interpret “the Father [...] dwelleth in me” and “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” as “My Father and I are the same Being,” did He also intend for us to interpret “I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you” that we, He, and His Father are all one ontological being? This, of course, is absurd.

To complicate the issue further, Jesus concludes his sermon by saying “my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). Such talk is nonsense if He and His Father are the same being.

Colossians 2:9
“For in [Christ] dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

Some have interpreted this scripture as meaning that all of the Trinity somehow dwelt in the person of Jesus in an ontological union of being as defined in the post-Biblical creeds. We’ll now investigate that.

First, one must understand that “Godhead” in 16th century English means “deity” or “godhood.” The Greek word is theotes which means “divinity.” This passage would better be rendered for our modern readers as “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (ESV). The scripture, therefore, is not stating that all of the members of the Trinity dwelt in Christ, but that Christ was fully and completely divine.

Something else the critics overlook is the following verse. “And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.” The word translated as “complete” is the adjective form of the noun translated as “fullness” in the previous verse. For this reason, it is better translated “And you have a fullness in him…” This verse, understood this way, teaches that the fullness of divinity that was in Jesus can also be in us. This fullness was not reserved for Jesus only, but for all. Therefore, this scripture cannot be rightly interpreted to support the idea that God is three persons yet one being.

The doctrine of the saints receiving a fullness of God is reflected in another scripture authored by Paul. “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19).

1 John 5:7
“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”

This one is the most fascinating. Why? Because it is almost universally recognized as being an interpolation (addition) to scripture that wasn’t actually written by the original author (See Metzger, Bruce. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 647-649).

Even if the text were authentic, which it probably is not, it does not define how the Father, Word, and Holy Ghost are one. For such a definition one must turn to John 17 which clearly shows they are not ontologically one being, but one in glory.

The fundamental dogma of Christianity; the concept of the union in one God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three infinite persons. It was the Nicene Council and even more especially the Athanasian Creed that first gave the dogma its definite formulation: "And the Catholick Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Substance." Equalization of the Son with the Father marks an innovation in the Pauline theology: "Yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him" (I Cor. viii. 6, R. V.), while in another passage the Holy Ghost is added (ib. xii. 3; comp. Titus ii. 13), thus rapidly developing the concept of the Trinity (II Cor. xiii. 14). Although the Judæo-Christian sect of the Ebionites protested against this apotheosis of Jesus ("Clementine Homilies," xvi. 15), the great mass of Gentile Christians accepted it.
The Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost as the third person of the Trinity could originate only on Gentile soil, since it was based on a linguistic error. The "Gospel According to the Hebrews," which was once held in high esteem, especially in Ebionitic circles, still regards the term "mother" as equivalent to "Holy Ghost" (Origen, Commentary on John ii. 12; see Preuschen, "Antilegomena," p. 4, Giessen, 1901; Henneke, "Neutestamentliche Apokryphen," p. 19, Tübingen, 1904), since in Aramaic, the language of this Gospel and possibly the original dialect of all the Gospels, the noun "ruḥa" (spirit) is feminine (comp. the Gnostic statement ἐντεῦθεν; Φάλτν ἀναδεχΘῆναι μητέρα καὶ υίόν Irenæus, "Adversus Hæreses," i. 271). The Ophites, furthermore, actually taught a trinity of father, son, and mother (Hilgenfeld, "Ketzergeschichte," p. 255); and the fact that the Church father Hippolytus found among the Ophites the Assyrian doctrine of the trinity of the soul (Hilgenfeld, l.c. p. 259) justifies the assumption of a kinship of the dogma of the Trinity with older concepts. The Mandæans also believe ruḥa to be the mother of the Messiah, though they regard them both as demons (Brandt, "Die Mandäische Religion," p. 124, Leipsic, 1889). The original trinity must, therefore, have included a feminine being, since thus alone could the concept of ruḥa have been obtained, and only after this form of trinity had been accepted in Judæo-Christian circles could the Greek τὸ φνεῦμα be regarded as a person, although it then became masculine instead of feminine. Philo's doctrine of the Logos is connected with this belief. God, who created His son in His own image (Gen. ii. 7), thereby made Himself triform, so that He Himself and the biform first Adam (= Logos = Jesus) constituted the first trinity.
Jewish Objections.
The controversies between the Christians and the Jews concerning the Trinity centered for the most part about the problem whether the writers of the Old Testament bore witness to it or not, the Jews naturally rejecting every proof brought forward by their opponents. The latter based their arguments on the Trisagion in Isa. vi. 3, a proof which had been frequently offered since Eusebius and Gregory of Nazianzus. The convert Jacob Perez of Valentia (d. 1491) even found an allusion to the Trinity in the word "Elohim," and Luther saw distinct traces of the doctrine in Gen. i. 1, 26; iii. 21; xi. 7, 8, 9; Num. vi. 22; II Sam. xxiii. 2; and Dan. vii. 13. The Jewish polemics against this doctrine date almost from its very conception. Even in the Talmud, R. Simlai (3d cent.) declared, in refutation of the "heretics," "The three words 'El,' 'Elohim,' and 'Yhwh' (Josh. xxii. 22) connote one and the same person, as one might say, 'King, Emperor, Augustus'" (Yer. Ber. ix. 12d), while elsewhere he substitutes the phrase "as if one should say, 'master, builder, and architect'" (ib. 13a). There are, however, no other allusions to the Trinity in Talmudic literature, as has been rightly pointed out by Herford ("Christianity in Talmud and Midrash," p. 395, London, 1903), since the polemics of the rabbis of that periodwere directed chiefly against dualism ( ). Another polemic, which is noteworthy for its antiquity and its protagonists, was the disputation between Pope Sylvester I. (314-335) and the Jew Noah (Migne, "Patrologia Græca," viii. 814).
In the Middle Ages the nature of the Trinity was discussed in every one of the numerous disputations between Christians and Jews, the polemic of Abraham Roman (in his "Sela' ha-Maḥaloḳet," printed in the "Milḥemet Ḥobah," Constantinople, 1710) being especially bitter; while in his well-known disputation Naḥmanides wrote as follows:("Milḥemet Ḥobah," p. 13a).
"Fra Pablo asked me in Gerona whether I believed in the Trinity [ ]. I said to him, 'What is the Trinity? Do three great human bodies constitute the Divinity?' 'No!' 'Or are there three ethereal bodies, such as the souls, or are there three angels?' 'No!' 'Or is an object composed of three kinds of matter, as bodies are composed of the four elements?' 'No!' 'What then is the Trinity?' He said: 'Wisdom, will, and power' [comp. the definition of Thomas Aquinas cited above]. Then I said: 'I also acknowledge that God is wise and not foolish, that He has a will unchangeable, and that He is mighty and not weak. But the term "Trinity" is decidedly erroneous; for wisdom is not accidental in the Creator, since He and His wisdom are one, He and His will are one, He and His power are one, so that wisdom, will, and power are one. Moreover, even were these things accidental in Him, that which is called God would not be three beings, but one being with these three accidental attributes.' Our lord the king here quoted an analogy which the erring ones had taught him, saying that there are also three things in wine, namely, color, taste, and bouquet, yet it is still one thing. This is a decided error; for the redness, the taste, and the bouquet of the wine are distinct essences, each of them potentially self-existent; for there are red, white, and other colors, and the same statement holds true with regard to taste and bouquet. The redness, the taste, and the bouquet, moreover, are not the wine itself, but the thing which fills the vessel, and which is, therefore, a body with the three accidents. Following this course of argument, there would be four, since the enumeration should include God, His wisdom, His will, and His power, and these are four. You would even have to speak of five things; for He lives, and His life is a part of Him just as much as His wisdom. Thus the definition of God would be 'living, wise, endowed with will, and mighty'; the Divinity would therefore be fivefold in nature. All this, however, is an evident error. Then Fra Pablo arose and said that he believed in the unity, which, none the less, included the Trinity, although this was an exceedingly deep mystery, which even the angels and the princes of heaven could not comprehend. I arose and said: 'It is evident that a person does not believe what he does not know: therefore the angels do not believe in the Trinity.' His colleagues then bade him be silent"
The boldness of the Christian exegetes, who converted even the "Shema'," the solemn confession of the Divine Unity, into a proof of the Trinity (Maimonides, in "Teḥiyyat ha-Metim," beginning), furnishes an explanation of the bitterness of the Jewish apologists. Joseph Ḳimḥi assailed the doctrine of the Trinity first of all ("Milḥemet Ḥobah," p. 19a), refuting with weighty arguments the favorite proof based on Gen. xviii. 1-2, where Yhwh is described as first appearing alone to Abraham, who later beholds two persons (comp. Abraham ibn Ezra's commentary, ad loc.). Simeon ben Ẓemaḥ Duran, who also refuted the Trinitarian proofs, added: "The dogma itself is manifestly false, as I have shown by philosophic deduction; and my present statements are made only with reference to their [the Christians'] assertions, while the monk Nestor accepted Judaism for the very reason that he had refuted them" ("Milḥemet Ḥobah," p. 48b). Noteworthy among modern polemics against the Trinity is Joshua Segre's critique ("Zeit. für Hebr. Bibl." viii. 22).
In the Zohar.
The Cabala, on the other hand, especially the Zohar, its fundamental work, was far less hostile to the dogma of the Trinity, since by its speculations regarding the father, the son, and the spirit it evolved a new trinity, and thus became dangerous to Judaism. Such terms as "maṭronita," "body," "spirit," occur frequently (e.q., "Tazria'," ed. Polna, iii. 43b); so that Christians and converts like Knorr von Rosenroth, Reuchlin, and Rittangel found in the Zohar a confirmation of Christianity and especially of the dogma of the Trinity (Jellinek, "Die Kabbala," p. 250, Leipsic, 1844 [trans]. of Franck's "La Kabbale," Paris, 1843]). Reuchlin sought on the basis of the Cabala the words "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" in the second word of the Pentateuch, as well as in Ps. cxviii. 22 (ib. p. 10), while Johann Kemper, a convert, left in manuscript a work entitled "Maṭṭeh Mosheh," which treats in its third section of the harmony of the Zohar with the doctrine of the Trinity (Zettersteen, "Verzeichniss der Hebräischen und Aramäischen Handschriften zu Upsala," p. 16, Lund, 1900). The study of the Cabala led the Frankists to adopt Christianity; but the Jews have always regarded the doctrine of the Trinity as one irreconcilable with the spirit of the Jewish religion and with monotheism

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Trinitarianism.
The Trinitarian formula first occurs in Matthew (xxviii. 19, R. V.) in the words spoken by the risen Christ to the disciples in Galilee: "Go ye therefore,and make disciples of all the [heathen] nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"; but it appears to have been still unknown to Paul (I Cor. vi. 11; Acts ii. 38).
It is quite significant for the historian to observe that, while in the older Gospel (Mark xii. 29) Jesus began reciting the first commandment with the Jewish confession, "Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one," this verse is omitted in Matt. xxii. 37. Christ, the preexistent Messiah (Gen. R. i.), being either identified with the Shekinah or divine glory (Rom. ix. 4; Col. i. 27; see Mayor, "Epistle of James," p. 75, notes), or with the "Memra" or "Logos," Philo's second god ("Fragments," ed. Mangey, ii. 625; compare "De Somniis," i. 39-41, ed. Mangey, i. 655 et seq.), was raised by Paul to the rank of a god and placed alongside of God the Father (I Cor. viii. 6, xii. 3; Titus ii. 13; compare I John v. 20); and in II Cor. xiii. 14 the Trinity is almost complete. In vain did the early Christians protest against the deification of Jesus ("Clementine Homilies," xvi. 15). He is in Paul's system the image of God the Father (II Cor. iv. 4; compare I Cor. viii. 6); and, being opposed "to Satan, the god of this world," his title "God of the world to come" is assured. However repugnant expressions such as "the blood," "the suffering," and "the death of God" (Ignatius, "Ad Romanos," iii., v. 13; idem, "Ad Ephesios," i. 1; Tertullian, "Ad Praxeam") must have been to the still monotheistic sentiment of many, the opponents of Jesus' deification were defeated as Jewish heretics (Tertullian, l.c. 30; see Arianism and Monarchians).
The idea of a Trinity, which, since the Council of Nice, and especially through Basil the Great (370), had become the Catholic dogma, is of course regarded by Jews as antagonistic to their monotheistic faith and as due to the paganistic tendency of the Church; God the Father and God the Son, together with "the Holy Ghost ["Ruaḥ ha-Ḳodesh"] conceived of as a female being," having their parallels in all the heathen mythologies, as has been shown by many Christian scholars, such as Zimmern, in his "Vater, Sohn, und Fürsprecher," 1896, and in Schrader's "K. A. T." 1902, p. 377; Ebers, in his "Sinnbildliches: die Koptische Kunst," 1892, p. 10; and others.

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